NBC's Kings-Devils Game One Overnight Down 25% From Bruins-Canucks Opener

NBC earned a 2.4 overnight Nielsen rating for the Kings’ 2-1 OT win over the Devils in Game One of the NHL Stanley Cup Final last night. That figure is down 25% from the Bruins-Canucks opener last year, which was the best Game One overnight in 12 years. Game One aired on cable TV from ’00-08. The Kings-Devils opener is also down 14% from a 2.8 overnight for the Blackhawks-Flyers opener in ’10, which aired on a Saturday night. Kings-Devils peaked at a 3.2 rating from 11:00-11:15pm ET, when the game-winning goal was scored. NBC also faced head-to-head competition from ESPN’s telecast of the NBA Draft Lottery and Game Two of the Celtics-Heat Eastern Conference Finals. The top local market for Kings-Devils was Buffalo with a 7.8 local rating. N.Y. (5.1) and L.A. (4.2) ranked second and third, respectively. Meanwhile, ESPN's Celtics-Heat telecast earned a 7.4 rating in N.Y. and 6.1 rating in L.A. The 4.2 local rating in L.A. for Kings-Devils ranks as the market's best Stanley Cup Final opener rating on record (dating back to '76). The 5.1 rating in N.Y. marked the second-best Stanley Cup Final opener in the market on record, behind only the Devils-Red Wings opener in '95 (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).

LOOK AWAY: In Toronto, Cathal Kelly reviews the CBC podcast "While The Men Watch" that ran before Kings-Devils Game One and writes under the headline, “CBC Alt-Broadcast Of Cup Final An Embarrassment.” After “suffering through the abrasive and aggressively ill-informed commentary of Jules Mancuso and Lena Sutherland” last night, this CBC live stream “isn’t about men and women.” This is about “idiots and non-idiots.” The eight people who “enjoyed what they saw last night on ‘While The Men Watch,’ regardless of gender, belong to the first group.” There were “two opposed themes on the night -- ‘We’re fun gals married to sports nuts’ and ‘Our sexual frustration could power a good-sized rocket ship’” (TORONTO STAR, 5/31).

COME BACK: In Montreal, Mike Boone notes TSN had its final NHL broadcast of the season two weeks ago and writes viewers “have been deprived” of host James Duthie’s “wit and the hockey wisdom of his in-studio panel: Bob McKenzie, Aaron Ward and Mark Crawford” (Montreal GAZETTE, 5/31).